Three viewings = disastrous movie

Rating: 4/10 (24 May 2006)

The first time I saw The Island, I found it to be an interesting movie, with an excellent premise and fun chase scenes. On a second viewing I was bored to tears by it but still recognized it as okay. And now I have viewed this movie in an Essay Fundamentals class as a parallel to the book we're reading, Brave New World. And, viewing it with people who hadn't seen it, I was entertained again, but the movie annoyed me to no end.
I was surprised by the sheer lack of people in my class who had not yet seen or even heard of this movie. Hollywood really needs to step up their advertising campaign, especially since this movie is so ridiculous that it entertains on a low level. Product placement is in no shortage, as we see advertisements for Aquafina, Xbox, and MSN Search, to name a few.
The story, in case you don't know, involves a society of people who are told that they are the lucky survivors of a global contamination and they are awaiting passage to The Island, nature's last remaining paradise. And now I'm going to spoil the rest of the movie. In reality they are clones whose sole purpose is to live, awaiting the island, until their sponsor, or identical person in the real world, needs their assistance with organ transplants or a new heart. The idea is to extend your life for the price of 5 million dollars.
One clone, Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor), figures out the truth and escapes the complex with his best friend Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson) and spends the rest of the movie running from the baddies.
What really pains me about this movie is that it could've, I repeat, could've been a terrific movie. It could've been a chilling sci-fi parable of our desperation to live longer, and to some degree it achieves this. But the endless chasing of the two characters in the second half is hard to sympathize with, as we see endless innocent bystanders getting mowed down by Lincoln's antics.
The other thing about this movie is that the trailer reveals precisely that McGregor and Johansson are clones, that the Island isn't real. Good job, marketers, now I don't care to see this movie. The only draw is Johansson, who is a beauty to look at, but whose lower set female voice provides with a hoarse scream that doesn't fit the bill of damsel in distress. Especially when she kicks Lincoln's ass at an Xbox game (which in itself is flawed because the clones are supposed to be conditioned to be nonviolent, and don't video games promote violence, especially Kung-Fu fighting ones?), and then cringes in the background as Djimon Hounsou folds his arms and sweats, helicopters flying overhead.
If you haven't seen the movie and read this review and got to this point, then I wouldn't bother seeing the movie. The twist is given away in the trailer (and in IMDb's plot summary), almost like The Truman Show, which my friend saw under the conditions of not knowing what was going on. He loved it. If you skipped to this paragraph and didn't read my review and don't really know anything about the movie, then it is worth a see.